{"id":1366,"date":"2006-02-10T10:29:49","date_gmt":"2006-02-10T18:29:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2006\/02\/forward_nails_lauder\/"},"modified":"2006-02-10T10:29:49","modified_gmt":"2006-02-10T18:29:49","slug":"forward_nails_lauder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2006\/02\/forward_nails_lauder.html","title":{"rendered":"FORWARD NAILS LAUDER"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Lauder is liable to be bent out of shape by a story in The Forward today. It nails the billionaire business mogul-cum-philanthropist&#8217;s deceptive, contradictory, and hypocritical stance on the restitution of Nazi-looted art as 1) a prominent collector who may or may not own some of it, 2) a former treasurer of the World Jewish Congress, which advocates Holocaust-era art restitution, and 3) a former chairman of the Museum of Modern Art, which has been involved for years in a scandalous restitution case.<br \/>\nIn a story headlined &#8220;Shoah Suit Puts Scrutiny On Lauder&#8217;s Art Collection,&#8221; reporter <a href=\"http:\/\/forward.com\/articles\/7330\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>Nathianiel Popper writes:<\/strong><\/font><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jnf.org\/site\/PageServer?pagename=president\" class=inline target=new\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Ronald S. Lauder, president of the Jewish National Fund\" src=\"http:\/\/www.jnf.org\/images\/content\/pagebuilder\/10193.jpg\" width=180 align=left border=0 \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p> When the heirs of Fritz Gr\u00fcnbaum, a Viennese art collector who perished in the Dachau concentration camp, began trying to track down their ancestor&#8217;s collection of Egon Schiele paintings, they hit what they thought was a stroke of luck: At least two of the pieces seemed to have ended up in collections associated with cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder &#8230;<br \/>\nGiven that Lauder [left] himself had argued vociferously for museums and private collectors to disclose the provenance, or ownership history, of any pieces thought to have been looted from Jewish homes during World War II, the family members assumed that they would easily get information about Lauder&#8217;s collection.<br \/>\nThey assumed wrong.<br \/>\nDespite his high-profile advocacy for openness &#8212; including testimony before Congress in 1998 &#8212; Lauder has never publicly listed the works in his own collection, many of which are by painters who were popular with Jewish collectors before the Holocaust. And a museum that he founded has failed to fulfill its pledge to post provenance information for its collection.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The last time a reporter bent Lauder out of  shape on this subject, the reporter was dumped  by his employer. I&#8217;m referring, of course, to David D&#8217;Arcy. As I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/archives\/2005\/05\/union_pursues_n.html\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>previously written<\/strong><\/font><\/a>, D&#8217;Arcy&#8217;s contract with National Public Radio &#8220;was terminated after a piece he did on Holocaust art theft and the Museum of Modern Art sent MoMA board chairman Ron Lauder so far around the bend that museum officials accused D&#8217;Arcy of &#8216;shabby reporting&#8217; and pressured NPR to repudiate it.&#8221;<br \/>\nWill Popper get the same treatment? I don&#8217;t think so for lots of reasons I&#8217;ve <a href=\"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/cgi\/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=11&#038;search=david+d%27arcy\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399> already explained<\/strong><\/font><\/a> many times, mainly having to do with NPR&#8217;s management. Will Lauder need cosmetic surgery? Dunno. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.forward.com\/\" class=inline target=new\"><strong><font color=#003399>The Forward<\/strong><\/font><\/a> is not likely to offer it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ron Lauder is liable to be bent out of shape by a story in The Forward today. It nails the billionaire business mogul-cum-philanthropist&#8217;s deceptive, contradictory, and hypocritical stance on the restitution of Nazi-looted art as 1) a prominent collector who may or may not own some of it, 2) a former treasurer of the World [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-m2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1366\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}